Blessing: it sounds silly but the veggie burgers and fries at P. Terry’s
September 3: After the first round of Pitocin, I got a one-hour break and was able to eat. Then we started round two. I only went up to 22 units this time when the doctor decided to give it a rest. Ultimately you can use too much Pitocin and overload the receptors and then it may not work in the future if needed. Keep in mind, while on Pitocin you’re not allowed to eat – assuming you go into labor, there might be a need for surgery and therefore they want your stomach to be empty. I was ravenous! During my break, I had my husband go get P. Terry’s (a local burger place in Austin), and I took a shower. I almost felt human again… except for the IVs hooked up to me and the hospital gown and the little human still inside of me and the super uncomfortable bed because no one expects a woman to be in Labor & Delivery for that long.
The next OB on call, Dr. Piparia, did a cervical check (another mind blowing, painful experience but slightly better than the last one). I was still 0.5-1.0cm dilated. She suggested that we try the foley bulb again. We did and this time it stayed. Just like the Cervidil, they leave the foley bulb in for up to 12 hours. A foley bulb is a catheter that is inserted into the cervix and is inflated with saline solution. It puts pressure on the cervix and encourages dilation. Once you’re dilated to around 4cm, it can be pulled out. After 5 hours, it came out, which means I was 4 cm dilated! We didn’t have to wait the whole 12 hours. This seemed super promising!
At this point, Dr. Piparia suggested to manually break my water to further encourage labor to kick start. In addition, she was putting me back on Pitocin. It sounded like all of this combined could finally be what we needed to get labor going.
As mentioned previously, I hadn’t planned to use any pain medication during my labor. I wanted to use natural methods and techniques to manage the pain so I could move around during labor. Alex and I specifically took birthing classes to support this and purchased every tool under the sun to help – birthing ball, massage tools, massage oils, tennis balls. We practiced meditation. My doula, Julie (will definitely share more details on Julie later – she was my guardian angel) totally supported this and was aware of my birth plan (I now roll my eyes at the birth plan). She was there to support us throughout this process and make sure I didn’t bite Alex’s head off during the process. 🙂 However, earlier in the day Julie mentioned that I might want to consider an epidural at some point just so I could get some sleep since we were already on day 3 and getting close to night 3 in the hospital and I hadn’t properly slept.
The Pitocin started again and I started having real bonafide contractions this time. I realized how truly exhausted I was and how ill equipped I was at that point to rationally manage the pain of the contractions. So I opted for the epidural. The process of putting in the epidural was so NOT fun. And the anesthesiologist was in a rush to get to a C-section so we had a very small window in which I could get the epidural. It was around 11:30pm.
At this point as we neared midnight, Alex and I recalled a previous conversation I had with my sister. Before I had an induction date scheduled, we were guessing Aayden’s birthdate. My sister said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if Aayden was born on Sept. 4? He and Emma (my niece) would be exactly six months apart to the day!” Alex and I half jokingly raised an angry fist in the air just as the clock hit midnight, cursing my sister for predicting Sept. 4 and blaming her (not really) for causing us to have such a long labor and delivery. At that point, both Alex and I knew that Aayden would be born on Sept. 4.
Hormonally Happy 